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Saturday, January 3, 2009

Likes and Dislikes in Crime Fiction/Mystery Reads in 2008

I came across an interesting blog today-new to me. The January 2 entry was on Likes and Dislikes in Crime Fiction: 6 of the Best and 6 of the Worse. Have a look and let me know what you think. The topics: Originality, Suspense, Character, Intelligence, Humor, Learning Something New are all things we've discussed in our own mystery group. Those are the six things the blogger of It's a Crime likes. The dislikes: Hype, misleading blurbs, the Rubbish Synopsis, Over-use of research, The gorefest, the Do Lesigans write the most horrific crime fiction? debate. (new to me, but apparently a topic in the UK). This original list was found here. Crime Scraps won Barbara of Scandinavian Crime Fiction's award for Critical Perspicacity.

Mysteries in Paradise has a fun list thing going. What were your top 2008 mystery reads. The books don't need to have been published in 2008. Some great lists. Deadline to add your list to these lists is January 4. Check out Kerrie's Blog. Lots of great books to add to your TBR pile.

3 comments:

I'd agree with most of those likes/dislikes. I'd add "Too many POVs" to the dislikes. Don't show me inside the head of the bad guy without giving his name, the protag, the protag's sister, some kid on the block that views one crime and isn't in the rest of the novel...

Hype doesn't bother me much; I just ignore it.

Whoever writes the goriest--who cares? It can't possibly be as simple as women versus men versus English, American, whatever.

I'd rather not go with gory for my mystery/fiction. Instead I try to stick to novels like John Patrick Lamont's "The Worst Kind of Lies." I found the story compelling and amusing, and also I could easily identify with the characters in relation to their lives and their jobs.